Multiple Russia UFO sightings were actually a military ICBM test launch

Skywatchers in Russia have been reporting sights of a bizarre ‘shuttlecock-shaped’ UFO flashing through the night.

Initially, it was feared the object – passing over the Urals and Volga regions – was a meteorite.

Social media across several time zones in Russia and also Kazakhstan was buzzing with awe-inspiring images of the mysterious object as it streaked overhead in the early evening.

Later it became clear that the UFO was not aliens or a lump of space rock but a test launch of a Topol-M intercontinental ballistic rocket by Vladimir Putin’s strategic missile forces.

Footage showed the launch from the Kapustin Yar firing range in Astrakhan region, claimed the Russian defence ministry. It hit a target at the Sary Shagan anti-ballistic missile site in Kazakhstan in a ‘successful’ test, according to officials.

The timings of the missile test matched the sightings of the unusual object in the sky.

Advertisement Advertisement

One posting in Saratov said: ‘Some kind of UFO. Did anybody else see it too? Something really unusual, what was it? Then it flashed…and soon disappeared’.

Sofya Salova, from Ufa, said: ‘We went for a walk with the children and saw a UFO over the city. It was unknown and surprising. At first it was just a bright spot, then it flashed to the right like a large torch, made a light ‘fart’ – sorry I can’t find a better word – and just vanished.’

In Chelyabinsk – hit by a major meteorite in 2013 – residents described the object as a ‘flying jellyfish’.

The Topol-M is a strategic intercontinental ballistic missile system developed at the end of the Soviet era. It is capable of carrying an 800-kilotonne warhead with the destructive power of 800,000 tonnes of TNT.

That’s 40 times the destructive power of the atomic bomb detonated over Nagasaki, Japan in 1945.